


Proscriptiones

by Kieron_ODuibhir



Series: Greywing and the Flying Outlaws [5]
Category: DCU, DCU (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics), Teen Titans (Comics)
Genre: Dark Grey Morality, Earth-3, F/M, Fairy Tales, Fluff, Flying Outlaws, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kidnapping, Mirror Universe, No Harm To Children, Villains for Hire, Waffles, but against all odds they are helping each other be better, everyone on this team has so many issues, i don't want to tag this Dick/Kori but she's interested, kidnapping is basically babysitting without permission right?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-15
Updated: 2016-04-29
Packaged: 2018-06-02 10:31:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6562795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kieron_ODuibhir/pseuds/Kieron_ODuibhir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>('The forbidden ones.')</p><p>They have one job left to do, before they go jetting off for Kori's home planet. One <em>simple</em> job.</p><p>Roy narrows his eyes at their ninja, who has ensconced himself in the one comfortable chair with the kid bouncing at his elbow like a rubber hamster. "<em>You're</em> going to tell a story."</p><p>"Nothing wrong with my voice," says Greywing, which is true and not the point.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Orion (Iason)

**Author's Note:**

> Proscription was a Roman form of outlawry practiced specifically against important people for political reasons. It has been so long since I updated this series I'm sorry.

They have the three days until Kori's space taxi arrives to wrap up the job Roy'd picked up from Ted Kord. That _should_ be plenty of time; it's just a standard extortion kidnapping. But if his partners are thinking like people bound for outer space instead of serious mercenaries, who knows what could happen.

Not that he doesn't trust his team to keep their heads in the game. Mostly. But he never knows what Grayson's thinking and Kori has her own priorities, and Earth money isn't one of them anymore.

Roy doesn't know the details of the ransom demands, though he can guess. It's not money—Ms. Rushkin is pretty well off, especially for a single black woman, but not likely to make a tempting target to anyone with Kord's resources, even if he'd been primarily a criminal and not just a really slimy businessman. Their fee alone is probably at least half of the largest ransom Rushkin could raise.

No, this little girl's mother works in R&D for a company that's been moving in on Kord's turf, now that the economy's starting to bounce back from the war, and ten to one he wants to hijack their next batch of patents by getting her to smuggle him all their secret data. Roy and his team are just muscle, hired for their stealth/stopping-power combo rather than any particular expertise in the ransom business; they don't need to know that kind of thing.

(The fact that he wants stopping power for this kind of work suggests Rushkin might have a line on someone or something tough that might try to fight them for possession of the girl, but if so he conspicuously failed to warn them. They're planning on maintaining a rotating watch until the handoff is over.)

 _Whatever_ Kord wants out of Rushkin, he needs leverage to get it. This is what they call in the business a 'tiger' kidnapping, for the long surveillance and stalking period that leads up to grabbing the pawn and then twisting the knife in your true target _just so_ , to get what you want. The three of them have only been watching the household for the last five days, but their employer provided them with six months' worth of data when they took the contract. Most of that information they've already duplicated on their own, the daily routine, but the facts they're relying on here were all completely courtesy of the report, so it had better be right.

Supposedly, Philippa Rushkin regularly passes her daughter to hired sitters from a service, and on at least six occasions has abruptly been summoned away on some emergency business trip and handed off custody of the girl in the middle of the night, without warning her.

Kord manufactured such an emergency. Rushkin shelled out for two sitters, who arrived within half an hour of her call despite it being one in the morning. Excellent service. Arsenal and Greywing wait twenty minutes before they slip inside, and then they split up—Dick heading for the bedroom, Roy creeping downstairs to deal with the babysitters. They're on the sofa, the man watching TV with the volume low and the woman napping against his shoulder, which makes sense at two AM. Roy gets low to avoid being reflected in the screen, though it's a flatscreen so the scene would have to be fairly dark for that to be at all possible, and crawls over carpet to just behind the sofa. This is too easy.

Roy counts to thirty, then lunges up to smack chloroform-soaked pads over both sitters' faces. He waits until they stop moving, then pockets the pads and meets up with Dick, a limp little form in pink PJs slung over one shoulder. They slip away into the dark.

Roy always feels vaguely shitty about killing people who just happen to be in the way, but that's not why they left the sitters alive. If Kord had wanted them dead, well then, it'd be done. But he specifically said not to…and it _wasn't_ because he's a nice guy.

When you see him in those boxy blue suits with the douchey orange glasses, a slightly overweight, round-shouldered scientist with a slight smile, Kord doesn't look dangerous. And he's not, not like the people Roy's used to who can twist off your head or get a knife in your back before you know they're there. (The, you know, type of dangerous people he _lives with._ )

Talking a straight fight, even Luthor (who hates hurting people, Ultraman possibly excepted) might be a bigger threat, just because he can _hit_.

But Kord is _sane._ Totally, coldly sane, the way Wayne never was, the way Superwoman sure as _hell_ wasn't, still less Ultraman, the way even Oliver wasn't or he wouldn't've put himself out in harm's way over and over again, shooting at enemies his own self when he had people for that.

Kord does exactly what he decides is optimal to achieve his goals, and in this case, the goal is to make sure the police and the target corporation never know Philippa Rushkin's daughter was kidnapped in the first place. And two sitters being threatened and bribed into reporting nothing about their failure is subtler than two mysterious disappearances, and _infinitely_ subtler than two dead bodies in Rushkin's living room, which she is not equipped to dispose of subtly and which would give the game away.

So. Nonlethal force. Some other contractor will handle the shutting-them-up end of things. Probably whoever's negotiating the ransom. Kord thinks the Outlaws don't know who hired them; Roy is used to being underestimated. After all, he was quietly sorting out Oliver Queen's shit for him on the regular by the time he turned sixteen.

They start pretty young on his side of the line, but there aren't many right-hand men out there who haven't started shaving.

Six hours after her kidnapping, Dorea Rushkin wakes up in a child-sized bed in a room done up in a dull, old-lady sort of pink, with a collection of toys lined up on the carpet against one wall. She lies still for three careful little-girl breaths, sits up, and stares around with oddly unsurprised eyes, considering this definitely isn't where she fell asleep last night. Roy, watching her through the buttonhole camera over the door lintel, raises his eyebrows at his laptop screen.

Only twice that the dossier knew of had Rushkin dropped her daughter off somewhere in the middle of the night, rather than calling in someone to take care of her, but apparently that's enough precedent for the brat to take an unfamiliar bedroom with nothing but a sort of pinched resignation. She swings her feet over the side of the bed and drops the two inches to the floor, and pads in her purple footie pajamas over to the boxy little chest of drawers, and the glass of water placed considerately on top.

She drinks the whole thing, then wipes her mouth on her pink pajama sleeve.

The holding site is a much nicer apartment than the one they evacuated yesterday evening, though slightly smaller. It has thick, earth-tone carpets and walls recently repainted in neutral pastels, a slickly appointed kitchen with no actual cooking utensils, three bedrooms including the one set up for the kid, which works out since they're standing a rotating watch and only two of them will ever be asleep at any given time, a ridiculously clean bathroom, and a locked closet that's intended for linens and maybe the vacuum cleaner, but actually contains most of Roy's heavy armaments.

Kord had it rented through cut-outs, same way he hired the Outlaws, and it's been thoroughly enough cleaned and is generic enough that it should be pretty much untraceable even after the fact. It's comfortable and private, which is more than Roy could say for a lot of places he's gone to ground. Downside of the untraceability is, it's got no special features, like soundproofing. Hopefully the neighbors will keep it down to a dull roar.

Roy is ready when the bedroom door swings open, laptop screen angled away from it, can of soda in one hand. "Hey, squirt," he says, with honest disinterest. "You finally woke up."

"When do I go home?"

"When your mom's ready," Roy shrugs. It's even a mostly honest answer; the timing of this job is going to be mostly controlled by how long it takes Rushkin to first agree to the ransom, and then extract the information Kord wants. The Outlaws have her until tomorrow, probably.

"Oh."

She just stands there, looking pink and brown and _blank_ , and Roy stares expectantly back at her. She doesn't say anything. He could go back to his computer, but what he was doing on it was watching her, and since it's his job to watch her he might as well do it directly.

He's a sniper. He can wait hours for his shot almost without motion. This random kid is not going to outwait him.

She does not appear to realize this.

Luckily, after about a minute and a half of mutual staring Kori comes in. She's wearing jeans and a green turtleneck along with sunglasses, the mirrored kind from the nineties that fit against the face tight enough that even a nosy kid won't be able to just peer under them. She's also holding a paper plate in each hand. "Waffles," she announces. "Real honey."

"I want those!" their target asserts. "Um, please?"

Kori sets the plates on the table, sliding one toward the kid and pulling out a chair to sit down in front of the other. Frozen waffles are not _quite_ the limit of her human-digestible cooking abilities, but they're close. Dorea Rushkin clambers up onto the chair, grinning, and then pauses uncertainly. "Do I getta fork?" she hazards, looking down at the honey-coated crunchy breakfast pastry thing. Roy raises his eyebrows. Aren't kids supposed to be sticky little monsters?

"Greywing is bringing them," Kori informs her. To listen to her, you'd think this kid was their newest teammate, getting the lowdown on their gear complement. Sheesh.

Dick comes in from the kitchen with a stack of paper cups and bundle of plastic forks in one hand, and half a gallon of milk in the other. He ceremoniously hands their target one of the forks, which makes her giggle before she digs in, and then turns and gives one to Kori, too.

Their eyes meet, in spite of the sunglasses, and they share a funny little smile.

Roy doesn't know whether to groan or cheer. (Seriously though, the most overtly romantic moment he's seen them have and it's over a _fork?_ These two deserve each other.)

"Hey," he says instead, as soon as they're done having their private moment right there in public and Grayson tosses the last fork at him and starts unstacking the cups, presumably to fill them with the milk he made Roy haul over from the old hideout. "Don't I get a waffle?"

"In the toaster, Arsenal," says Grayson tonelessly. "You're a grownup, you can wait."

"Ladies first," Starfire concurs, and cuts into her Eggos.

The kidnap victim giggles.

The kid gets sticky anyway, which Roy should have predicted. She washes herself up, though, in the bathroom, which is good because none of them would be his first, second, or eightieth choice for sponging honey off a child's hands and face. They are dangerous mercenaries. None of them cross-trained as _babysitters._

It wasn't his idea to leave her unrestrained.

As far as he can tell, his teammates' logic runs something like this: If the operation goes well, she'll never tell the police about this anyway, because her mom will have to keep it secret, because she'll have participated in industrial espionage.

And if the thing gets screwed up and the cops find out about the kidnapping, Kord's going to be the obvious suspect because his company is the one that stands to gain from whatever he's making Rushkin do. If Kord gets squeezed, he'll sell the Outlaws down the river in a hot second. And if the authorities _do_ wind up talking to the brat and identify them that way, and add the kidnapping to their tab, it's not like it'll really change their wanted status, what with the war crimes on Kori's record and the government perfectly happy to crucify Roy in Oliver's place, since the actual leader of the Black Bow ended the war way too beheaded to stand trial.

And what with Greywing being _The June '01 Assassin_ , he guesses, although no one official actually _knows_ that, and it's kind of old news at this point. Though given the noise people still make about who really whacked Kennedy, he guesses it's not surprising they haven't really let that one go yet, considering nobody was ever caught for the Wilson killing at all.

Anyway, they're leaving the planet in two days.

He's pretty sure, though, that all of that reasoning is just justifications for his partners not _wanting_ to keep her tied up and blindfolded for however long this is going to take. He wouldn't normally accuse Kori of being soft (Dick…maybe, except in other areas he's still a straight-up legit psychopath so whatever), but they both have kidnapping _issues._ So. Fine. If she never knows she was kidnapped, all the better. If this whole thing goes smoothly, maybe she'll never even know anything happened except weird babysitters.

Only if her mom is a really cool customer, though.

He still made Kori wear the sunglasses. They make her look more than a little bit like an utter retro dipshit with a godawful spray tan, especially since they're inside with the blinds closed, and she complains about the reduction of her vision, but it's better than being instantly recognizable via the most casual of descriptions. There's probably _somebody_ besides Kori on this planet with glowing green eyes, but the odds of that person being a redheaded woman are low, and the odds of her _also_ being orange are scraping negative infinity. 'Nuclear Fusion' has been flying below the radar pretty well since just after Superwoman was brought down. No need to break the streak on the home stretch.

(It also hides some of the damage from her fight with her sister. A black eye on a Tamaranean is seriously freaky stuff. Being lit from the middle and all.)

And then _of course_ his partners blow his efforts by using all their codenames in the first five minutes. Code names which of course are not odd or memorable _at all._ He _knows_ Grayson is subtler than this. Does he just not care? Is there some weird ex-Talon logic going on here where they're on a job so codenames _must_ be dropped?

He goes to dump the disposable dishes into the kitchen trash after breakfast, and stares at them for a few seconds after he does it. They are three very dangerous people. He knows this. How did they turn into _actual babysitters_?

Roy shakes his head. Well, he was the one who insisted they go through with this. No way out but through.

"I could try," Grayson is saying in that reserved, almost-but-never-quite-skittish way of his when Roy comes back into the room.

"What are we trying?" he asks, not without trepidation.

Dorea bounces. "Wing's gonna tell a story!"

Roy narrows his eyes at their ninja, who has ensconced himself in the one comfortable chair in the small living room with the kid bouncing at his elbow like a rubber hamster. " _You're_ going to tell a story."

"Nothing wrong with my voice," says Greywing, which is true and not the point.

Roy eyeballs him a second, then shrugs, drops down, and sits crosslegged on the rug. "Okay, then. This should be fun."

"You like stories, 'rs'nal?" Dorea chirps. A glint of calculation in her eyes.

Roy will never get kids. She's trusting enough to totally buy that they're legitimate babysitters, but sneaky enough to be dropping test questions to see if she actually _approves_ of each of them. This would be like if, when Queen first picked him up off the street, Roy'd skipped straight over being wary about all the fucked-up reasons a powerful guy might offer a homeless kid a job, and judged Oliver entirely by his coffee preferences. (Expensive, with way more cream and sugar than the manly rep of anyone less badass could have survived—Roy spent a lot of time being coffee boy and running messages, when there wasn't call for a sniper, before he got old enough for actual business more involved than 'shoot that guy in the neck.')

"I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of story 'Wing tells," he says, making his eyebrows tell the squirt not to give him any shit.

"That's not an answer," she pouts. Defying the eyebrows.

"That's 'cause it was a dumb question," he drawls back.

He hasn't failed to notice the awkwardness his teammates have with her—they hide it pretty well, but like most normal human stuff, he's the one with the most practice with kids. Not so much with _childcare_ , but there were younger kids on the rez and he went to school till he was thirteen, and there were a lot of guys with families in the Black Bow. There's nothing special about kids, they're just tiny ignorant people. He doesn't get the hype.

This brat's pretty funny, though.


	2. Adonis (Ganymede)

"Nothing wrong with my voice," he tells Roy levelly, and it's a lie but it's true enough for now.

He ignores the ensuing burst of verbal sparring between Arsenal and their mission objective—Roy's need to intricately negotiate boundaries and dominance patterns with every individual he has contact with is something Grayson has grown used to—while he settles the story in his mind. Roy drops onto the floor near Grayson's chair with his back against the wall and tries to draw Grayson into his and Dorea's verbal game, but all he gets is a tiny smile.

He's glad not to be left alone with the child, whatever Roy's reasons are. (He harbors an irrational fear he will forget she is a _kidnap_ target and slit her throat, if she startles him.)

"Dorea," he says, and she looks up attentively.

"Storytime?" she prompts.

He smiles his best smile for her. "If you're done talking to Arsenal."

A sniff dismisses Arsenal's existence, before she flops down beside him on the rug. Grayson is relieved. Her heartbeat against his arm if she had sat _on_ him would have been distracting. Three pairs of eyes are disconcerting enough, even with Starfire pretending to ignore him.

Roy has a point, after all. This is going to be the longest he has talked since he was six. Or possibly ever. He doesn't actually remember the time before he was Talon very well.

It's fine. Just break it into pieces. A story is made of sentences, and sentences are easy now.

"Once upon a time, there was a princess."

In the far corner, where she has taken up the less-comfortable chair beside the one chink in the blinds, Kori's expression twitches a little, and she becomes a little less subtle about watching him rather than the street outside. Maybe she thinks the story is going to be about her, but that is hers to tell, and Dorea isn't old enough to understand it yet.

This story doesn't belong to anyone real.

"What was her name?" Dorea demands.

She didn't have one. But Grayson refuses to say that. Everyone has a name, even if nobody remembers it. "Martha. And she was promised in marriage to a prince who lived very, very far away. And when the time came for her beautiful daughter to depart, the old queen packed her golden cups and diamond rings and all the things that make a rich dowry, because she loved her with all her heart. She gave her child a horse to ride, and the horse was a magic talking horse called Falada, and she gave her a maid to ride beside her and keep her company on the journey."

Their local princess snorts. "A maid? With all that treasure, there should be a company of guards."

"Large troop movements draw attention," Grayson retorts. "Stop interrupting."

"Yeah, stop in'ruptin'," Dorea agrees, smirking at Starfire.

Children are very strange.

"The queen knew that the road could be treacherous, so before they departed she went alone to her tower and pricked her finger with a silver dagger, and let three drops of blood fall onto a silk handkerchief. This she took to her daughter, saying, keep this charm and no harm will come to you."

Dorea is chewing thoughtfully on her own wrist as she listens. It is mildly disconcerting. "It was magic?"

"Yes."

"So the queen was a witch?"

"A good witch. Yes."

"Hmph," says Kori.

"Sh!" says Dorea. She leans forward a little, absorbed in the narrative. "An' then what?"

"The maidservant was standing nearby, and she heard the queen's words to Princess Martha." He uses the name at the last second. "Which was misfortune, for though her face was fair her heart was full of hate. So after goodbyes had been said and the journey begun, after some time the travelers came to a stream.

"'I am so thirsty,' said the princess. 'Pray take my golden cup and fetch me some water.'"

Kori snorts, either at the affected language—he knows she can understand it because _he_ understands it, and she learned her English from him—or at the stupidity of not having brought a store of something as important as water. Grayson agrees that it was a very strangely planned journey, but it's a _story._ Everyone ignores her. (Not that Richard can, really. She's looking at him.) "'I am tired,' replied the maid. 'Fetch it yourself.'

"So the princess got down from Falada's white back and took her golden cup and knelt by the stream to drink. Martha was very young, to be getting married. Nothing bad had ever happened to her, and she thought that meant nothing ever would. 'Ah,' sighed the three drops of blood, 'if your mother only knew, I'm sure her heart would break in two.'

"But having had her drink Martha mounted up again, and she and the maidservant—"

"What was _her_ name?" demands Dorea suddenly.

"Angeline."

(This is the name of a woman he killed when he was a few years older than Dorea is now; a practice mission for times when he might have to engage his targets verbally in order to get them into position. _I'm Angeline,_ she smiled down. _What's your name?_ He convinced her he'd found a hurt kitten in an alleyway, then stabbed her in the eye when she bent down to look into the box. That was not a tactic Owlman ever favored for Talon afterward, but it had been valuable to know he _could_ be used that way.

Such a _waste_.)

"Martha and _Angeline,_ " he continues, finding the thread of the story again, "rode on. Until Martha was thirsty again, and said, 'Pray take my golden cup and fill it from the river.'"

"And 'ngeline said, 'I'm tired, get it yourself!'" Dorea guesses, so proud of herself Richard would probably agree even if she were wrong.

"That's right. So Martha knelt down by the river again, scooping at the water, and as she bent the handkerchief with the three drops of blood slipped from her pocket. 'Oh!' said the blood as it was washed away downstream, 'if your mother only knew, her heart would surely break in two!' And Angeline was pleased, because she knew that without that charm Princess Martha was defenseless. So she said, 'Take off your fine clothes and exchange them for mine. If you argue I will kill you.'"

"Yet _another_ reason there should have been an armed guard," grouses Starfire.

"Oh shush up," Roy tells her, as if he has forgotten his usual subtle deference to her—or maybe he is just vitally interested in the fairy tale, for whatever reason. He looks up at Grayson again, expectant, says, "Seriously, though, has this witch-queen never heard of running background checks."

Richard shrugs. "There is always an infiltrator to defeat any countermeasure."

"She took her _clothes?_ " demands Dorea, bored with not understanding what they're talking about.

"Yes, and forced Martha to put on her maidservants' things. And then she said, I belong on Falada, and you belong on my nag, and the princess had to accept it." He sees Koriand'r stiffen, just slightly, so subtly, at the corner of his vision. Her aura does not quite flare. This story perhaps treads too closely on hers, after all.

"What's a nag?" asks Dorea, before he can consider stopping.

"A bad horse." Kori would not thank him for coddling her. The story will continue. "And then Angeline required her to swear under the open heaven to speak of this to no one and keep her true name secret, or lose her life. So she swore, weeping.

"They rode on until they reached the palace of Martha's betrothed, where there was much rejoicing, and the prince rushed down to lift the pretty maidservant in the fine dress off the white horse, thinking she was his bride. And the true princess was left behind in the courtyard until the old king saw her through the window, beautiful even in her poor clothes, and asked who she was.

"'Oh,' said Angeline, now called Martha, 'I brought her as a companion, but she is no good to me at all. Give her some work so she will not be idle.'

"There were no places for delicate girls open in the royal household, besides in the service of the new princess, so the king said that she could assist the young boy who herded his geese, and that was that."

"Is that the end?" Dorea asks doubtfully, and he feels himself smile a little.

"No. The boy's name was Conrad," he says, pleased that someone in the story besides the horse comes with a name. Amazed that he remembers it, but the further he gets into the story the more it returns to him, until he thinks he can almost hear his mother's voice. He cannot, though. He has long forgotten what it sounded like. "And as soon as Martha had gone away with him and the treasures had all been unloaded, the false princess commanded that the white horse Falada be put to death—she said that it had been a disobedient and troublesome beast, but really she knew that it could sometimes speak, and did not want her secret revealed.

"Angeline had Falada's head nailed up over the gate where Martha and Conrad drove the geese out every day, and when the goose-girl passed under it she would say,

"'Alas, Falada, hanging there!'"

"Weak," says Kori, and Richard looks up at her. Strong feeling, he determines, but not deep—the fire and color in her is bright, but not threatening to burst forth. She is annoyed with his story, but no longer taking it personally. Richard finds the smile resting more easily on his lips. He knew she would relax, if he kept going—he _knows_ her. Not merely as like reflects like, now, but through familiarity. Through time.

"Smart," he disagrees. And lets it be only for the story, only for Martha. "Remember that," he bends his head again to tell Dorea. "The princess didn't have the power to fight the witch right then, so she waited, and she stayed alive."

"But her horsie!" Stains of blood have risen faintly in the child's dark cheeks; she has no interest in advice on survival. Doesn't even suspect that _they_ are the monsters in her own fairytale. She seizes his ankle. "She should have saved her!"

"It's okay," Richard soothes, and he can feel the little girl's elevated heartbeat through the arteries in the palm of her hand. There was a time when he could not even look a child in the face without seeing it covered in blood, whether the child was bleeding or not. "Falada was a magic horse. She'll be fine. And the head said to the goose-girl, 'Alas, young queen, passing by, if your mother only knew, her heart would surely break in two.'"

Roy is giving him _such_ a look, clear as words: 'you think a talking disembodied horse head is going to make the kid feel better?' But Grayson distinctly remembers this being part of the story, and anyway, it _does._ She straightens up, attentive again, and Grayson moves on.

"Each day, when they had brought the geese to pasture, the goose-girl would sit and brush out her hair, which was of pure gold. Every day, Conrad tried to steal a few strands, and Martha would say," Grayson pauses, here, trying to remember the rhyme his mother used, and failing. "'Wind that comes throughout the day, blow Conrad's hat clean away.'"

Roy gives a little snort, but Grayson feels that for the first poetry he has ever composed, it was not bad.

"So then the wind would come up and blow Conrad's hat all around the field, and he would be busy chasing it until Martha had finished brushing and braiding her hair."

"So she was a witch, too?"

He supposes so. "Not as powerful as her mother, or Angeline." Dorea nodded, as if this was obvious. "After many days of this, the goose boy went to the old king and said, I will not work with that girl anymore. Asked why, he told the king all about the talking horse head and the magic wind.

The next day, the king hid nearby and heard the goose-girl say to the princess' beheaded horse, 'Alas, Falada, hanging there!'

"And the horse-head reply, 'Alas, young queen, passing by. If your mother only knew, her heart would surely break in two.'"

Dorea finished Falada's chant with him, which he thinks he might have used to do with his mother.

"And once he had seen everything, the king called the goose-girl to him and asked for an explanation. She answered, 'I am forbidden to speak of it to another living soul, for I swore an oath under the open sky.'

"So the king said, 'Tell your troubles to this iron stove, then,' and went away."

"To the _stove,_ " Arsenal repeats, before the little girl can say anything. "I no longer have any idea where this is going." Grayson raises an eyebrow at him, and he spreads his hands, resettles himself on the floor. "But I trust you, keep going. Might as well converse with kitchen appliances, that's actually less weird than severed horse heads."

Grayson does not obey the direction to continue straight away.

Dorea Rushkin is ignorant, and innocent. Her trust means nothing.

But Arsenal knows what he is. Knows him better probably than anyone alive, because Starfire only met Talon the once, for that commanded kiss. Increasingly, Arsenal _sees_ him. Just yesterday Richard held Roy at knife point, in the attempt to make him stop talking about what he saw. Just yesterday, Roy was enraged by the realization that Richard had become attached and wanted to keep their team together for reasons that had nothing to do with their usefulness to each other.

This is Roy Harper, who remembers every slight against him and broods over grudges with the implacability of rigor mortis. And who is careless with his words, sometimes, but not of such things as this.

"So the real princess," he says, after a single frozen second waiting for Roy to realize what he has said and take it back, "climbed inside the stove, which was empty even of ashes, and because she was alone and had frustrated her own best hope in the name of honor, she wept and told the cold iron everything that had happened between her and Angeline.

"But the old king had gone up onto the roof and was listening down the stove-pipe, and heard it all. And he was pleased, for though his new daughter-in-law was beautiful and clever he had not been able to like her, and he went to Martha as she crawled out of the stove and embraced her, and had her bathed by servants and clad in a gown of silk and pearls."

"He showed the false Princess Martha the nameless goose-girl, and asked her what the punishment should be, for one who attempted to lie and claim a rank that was not hers. And thinking Martha had broken her oath and told the truth, but not been believed, Angeline said that she should be nailed up in a barrel full of broken glass, and rolled down the cobbled streets of the city until she had been sliced to death.

"And the king said, You have pronounced your own sentence. And so it was that the witch was punished and the princess restored to her place."

"And did she see her mom again?" Dorea queries.

Grayson blinks. He was not prepared for all these _questions_. He feels as if he has told a lie in a mission report, and is being forced to furiously invent new lies to fill gaps the first one created, or be found out. He shakes off the feeling; he has not planned a deception that poorly in any of the few times he has had need to mislead an employer, and it will do him no good to let the trapped sensation of having tried to circumvent Owlman's will close around him. He knows from experience it will strangle the words from his throat, and Dorea will not understand. She will be afraid.

He is willing to frighten her, of course, given reason. Would kill her, for the right incentive. He knows himself. But he has also accepted that it is not weakness that he does not _want_ to.

Does not want to be the reason that this child never sees her mother again.

Or at least, if it is weakness, it is one he is willing to allow himself. Everyone he has ever observed to possess contentment had at least one point of immense vulnerability. As long as he knows what his weaknesses are, he can defend them.

"She did," he says, surprising himself with the gentleness of his voice. "It was a long journey, but after Martha's brother became king, the old queen could spare the time to come and visit. And she used her magic to heal the horse Falada," he adds, remembering belatedly that he had promised something of the sort.

"That's good," their temporary charge concludes. Seems a little melancholy. Missing her own mother, Richard thinks.

"Yes."

"Can we play dolls now?" Dorea asks, and then seeming to take Roy's agreement for granted, seizes him by the wrist and tugs him after her toward the dull pink bedroom designated as hers.

This tactic turns out to work just as well for her as it usually does for Kori, despite the fact that the tiny human girl lacks the power either to physically drag Arsenal anywhere, or to visit grievous bodily harm if defied. He shoots a glare at Greywing, daring him to comment, and Richard merely smiles. A tactic which reliably infuriates the already irate.

Grayson watches through the open door as Roy manages to escape the prospect of dolls and cajole Dorea into something that turns quickly into a game of catch, with a stuffed pig as the ball. It probably helps that these are unfamiliar toys. He's heard that children get attached to particular dolls.

Kori rises, in his left peripheral vision, a fact he notes but does not consider personally relevant until she comes toward him. (He has not been avoiding her. That would be ridiculous. Roy is obviously imagining things, anyway.)

She settles down in the other chair on this side of the room, the one with very stiff cushions, and he watches her from the corner of his eye but keeps the bulk of his attention on the game progressing in the bedroom. Roy is goading Dorea into taking ever more wild shots with the pig, all of which he is managing to catch without standing up. If she were capable of putting a little more power into her throws, it might count as training.

"You invented that story?" Starfire asks him in an undertone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Grayson's version of 'The Goose Girl' is based on the Grimm Brothers', though with numerous departures, such as acknowledging that all the women in the story _besides_ the villain explicitly do magic. ^^ I always thought the iron woodstove part was interesting, because those hadn't existed all that long, really, when the Grimms were out story-collecting. 
> 
> Anyway, Dick has achieved five ranks in 'child minding' and four ranks in 'performance: oratory,' and is dealing with Roy's alarming declaration (yesterday) that Kori is totally into him mostly via avoidance. XD He can only handle so many things-he-was-not-trained-for at any given time.


	3. Artemesia (Callisto)

"You invented that story?" Koriand'r asks, watching her comrade Richard, the grey-winged. Each of her humans continually reveals new depths to his character, and every time she contrives to be startled.

"Uh?" Greywing answers. She has very rarely taken him by surprise. She assumes _this_ surprise is real because he is not wearing a surprised expression. "No. It's old. My mother used to tell it to me."

His mother. Dead, of course—humans are fragile and their society is worse, and most of them seem to be clanless orphans. She knows his parents taught him to come as close to flying as she has ever seen anything come without the power of flight, enough that he took it into his name, and that his accursed master taught him everything else, but that is all.

And his mother taught him the story of the gooseherd princess, with its satisfyingly bloody ending.

"Your parents," she says. "What became of them?"

Greywing blinks. Looks at his hands. They are strange, his hands—seeing them working alongside Roy's these past months, she has noticed it. Strange because _perfect_ , unmarred by scars like Roy's, unmarked by anything at all. Even Kori has her scars, some of them deep and dreadful. Even Superwoman had weapon-calluses. But Richard's are as a child's hands, soft and smooth for all their strength. As though he has never worked or fought in his life.

His hands are a lie, and yet they are the most honest part of him, more likely to say what he is feeling than his back or his eyes.

"When the Court took me," he says, tongue slower than usual, almost stumbling, "my parents…took exception. Wouldn't stop digging." He shrugs. "There was an _accident_." He is quiet, but Koriand'r can feel more words resting on his tongue, and waits. "I didn't know then," he adds, not looking at her. "They told me I'd been sold."

After he escaped, he must have looked. To hunt them down and punish them for their betrayal, perhaps—she knows _she_ would have vengeance on the mind, if she had been betrayed for mere _wealth,_ but Greywing is hard to predict. Must have found his mother and father long dead, whatever he intended. Found traces of their search. Realized they had wanted him after all.

Jealousy flares. They failed, they died, he never knew they had made the attempt—but Greywing had someone trying for him. Her parents were prepared to sacrifice her, and her people could not spare the effort for her rescue. Only one worthless, traitorous sister, and her far too late.

She saw that same jealousy in both men's eyes when she spoke of her mother and father, still living. Grits her teeth. "I am sorry," she tells him.

He blinks. Grins, all teeth. "About to leave the planet, you finally bother with Earth manners?"

"This isn't manners!" she snaps, letting her aura flare, but keeping her voice down. Distressing the child is to be avoided. She will wail. Human infants sound very like their warning sirens. (Or, come to think of it, probably the other way around.) It will be unpleasant and could draw attention. "This is _sorry._ Sentiment." Dares, and sets the tips of her fingers on his wrist. "It _should not_ have been so, Richard."

He doesn't move his arm away, but he shrugs the other shoulder, smiling, and won't look at her face because the smile won't be in his eyes. (She's learning.) "'Shouldn't' doesn't mean much."

_What is, is, and will be._

Koriand'r has noticed this attitude in both of her humans, and many of her fellow slaves of several races, on Themiscyra. She has no patience for it. It is a warrior's portion to endure until she can triumph, certainly, but if Greywing were less willing to embrace despair, perhaps he would have won free long before he did.

She turns her head to look at the child clambering across Arsenal's lap in the effort to wrestle the fuzzy pink thing from his hands. "And should _she_ never go home. What if her mother is a fool," she says, withdrawing her hand, "and does not submit?"

"He'll probably just kill her."

The rightful queen of Tamaran accepts that prediction with a nod. "But if he does not…we will be party to it. Part of it. And we will not _be_ here to wipe the stain away."

The ball of muscle that closes Greywing's jaw jumps. Kori idly wishes the circumstances allowed her to touch it, and marvel all the more at his fragile strength. She has come to appreciate the marble beauty of his features, but likes them best in motion that has feeling behind it, even this coiled tension. "It's too late to back out now," he says.

Truth. Koriand'r brushes her fingertips together, feeling the edges of her aura fuzz against one another. So much power, singing in her blood, and yet she has been brought to heel before.

"Greywing," she says quietly, "You know the heroes. Do you know how we can anonymously contact someone who will protect her from Kord?"

"You want us to _sell out_ our employer?" Greywing's dark brows are far up his otherwise still face. "Are you sure this isn't a scheme to make Earth too hot to hold us, so Roy will never try to come home?"

Koriand'r draws back, stung. "You think that of me?"

He wears an expression of contrition seconds too late for it to be natural, but she has come to know her humans' ways well enough not to grow angrier over that. Greywing's face and voice were taken from him with his name. He wears all three uneasily. False expressions are not always lies on him. "No," he assures her. All irresistible sincerity, and she knows already that she will be reconciled in seconds, but for now she is still offended.

"It is not softness, either," she states. "I swore an _oath_. I will not be one of them."

If they do not stay with her forever, Kori will still keep Arsenal's voice and Greywing's gaze with her, as reminder. She will be Queen, but she will never be the queen that Diana was. She will never be the Queen her mother is, and let a man sell her daughters away for peace. And she will _never_ bear chains again.

Her enemies, she will kill. If she dislikes them, she will kill them _slowly_. But she will not tolerate slavery. And she will not be a party to it.

Greywing's face has gone thinking-blank, gaze distant—she's learned to pay attention to the _size_ of human pupils as well as their direction, to deduce where they are looking, though she's not as good at it as those who grew up with the practice. It's a stupid piece of evolution, but maybe it was useful to their primitive ancestors to be able to point at things without moving their limbs, or some such thing. Anyway, Richard's eyes are different when he's thinking than when he's waiting for her to speak, and she can tell the difference. "Kord won't sell her," he says again, at last, which does not seem worth the time spent on thought. "That isn't his business, and it doesn't turn enough profit to balance the risk, as a sideline."

Koriand'r scowls. "I do not care whether you think it is likely. If it _happens,_ I will be on another world, so I must make it impossible before I go. Understand?"

"You could stay longer."

"Is that _your_ scheme to trap me here?"

"No." Greywing does not rise to the bait, and Koriand'r simmers. He folds his perfect hands. "I _don't_ know heroes. I avoid them. The few I might track down might not listen, and would not keep silence."

"Should I ask Arsenal?"

"He _is_ the one who has contacts," Greywing allows. But she can see he has something else he wishes to say. "Better," he remarks, his pretty face expressionlessly turned toward a wall, "to tip the authorities. Kord is no Ultraman. Police can raid him."

"And the police have _phone numbers_ ," Kori realizes, a smile spreading across her face. She turns to look at Dorea, gone slack with tiredness against Arsenal's side, her face pressed trustingly just beside a hidden knife. _Mine_ , she thinks, though she does not mean it.

They will follow through on the hand-off, and Dorea will feel betrayed, but they will send her protectors. She may die, but she will not be forsaken. It is enough. It is all anyone has a right to.

Any promises beyond that much are lies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> XD Obviously humans are not all clanless orphans, but Kori's had a biased sample set. 
> 
> ^^ Most of the title references are mythological and straightforward enough, but the Artemesia I had in mind was satrap of Caria under Xerxes the Great, and known to her contemporaries as a capable and frighteningly vicious military commander.


End file.
